I prefer xfce because I use my laptop for 3D work and need to squeeze every bit of processing power
but I also just prefer the look and feel. To me it feels significantly "different" than windows which I like.
When I first used linux I liked others because they looked and felt a bit more like windows. I like the
multiple workspaces too.

I do like cinnamon a lot too. But have had bad experience with it crashing.

The only thing that could be better about xfce is if it had out of the box window snap tiling function
like in cinnamon and windows and so on. Were you press windows key and then directional arrow
to resize and snap windows quickly. I use this ALL the time. You can install it on xfce though.
Maybe its better that its not included because other people don't care and it would just be bloat.

I have a little netbook: ASUS X101CH. It is not very fast and runs (walks !) on 1 GB RAM. So i needed a lightweight distro. So it was either Linux Mint XFCE or MATE.

Linux Mint XFCE
I tried XFCE first. Bad news: each time i suspend by closing the lid, the screen is off on resume. Totally black. Great! I said, it is an opportunity to have fun creating a script that automatically turn on the screen on resume. It worked perfectly. But then i found another issue: press the shutdown button and it will shutdown instantly without caring about your unsaved documents... The black screen problem was an hardware-related problem, but it was not the only problem. So i erased everything and installed Linux Mint MATE instead.

Linux Mint MATE
This one is almost perfect. Almost. It is nicer and richer than XFCE. Fast and full of good features. Being perfectionist, i still have found two minor problems:

The Mint-Y theme is beautiful but not ready yet. It is safer to stay on Mint-X for now.

On my little machine, there was a BIOS-ACPI competing with mate-power-manager brightness controls. That results in brightness keyboard controls being a bit weird and imprecise. But i corrected this by adding acpi_backlight=none into Kernel Boot Parameters. Now it's perfect.

Before i was on Windows 7 Starter. I installed Linux Mint in dual boot so i could go back to Windows 7. But i never go back to Windows 7: it is way too slow.

On my old core 2 , Cinnamon 17.2 - 17.3 was glitchy and froze often while XFCE was perfect . after upgrading the video card Cinnamon ran fine and I preferred it over XFCE for the level of polish and ease of customizing it . Now with an I7 and GTX1060 , LM 18.2 KDE with Plasma 5 wins hands down , it's fast and rock solid . I still keep LM18.2 Cinnamon in a VM just to watch it evolve but KDE kills both Cinnamon and XFCE IMO . Can't see myself using anything else , Dolphin's the bomb .

I have been running Cinnamon for some years but just purchased a USB flash drive with 64 bit, Cinnamon, KDE, XFCE and Mate so I will try XFCE.
My Two Acer 5515 laptops have some years on them and Cinnamon has slowed a little as code bloats.

Cinnamon. I see the need for Mate or KDE if you have an old, slow computer that just won't process things fast enough for Cinnamon. I also gave XFCE a try but found it so counter-intuitive I won't bother with that again.

rgand wrote:I also gave XFCE a try but found it so counter-intuitive I won't bother with that again.

I had a similar experience that I can best sum up by comparing one setting between Cinnamon and XFCE -- font size. In Cinnamon, the font menu shows you a simple 1.0 value to indicate that fonts are scaled at 100%, and you can decrease to 0.9 or increase to 1.1 to make fonts smaller or larger in increments of 10%. In XFCE, the fonts menu wants you to set the font size... in DPI.

To me, this crystallizes the reason Linux has had so much trouble making headway in the desktop market: it's an OS designed by programmers for programmers, and little thought is given to how the interface should be designed in order to be beginner friendly (which is what people usually mean when they say "user friendly"), because programmers are advanced users who want an efficient, precise interface, not one that's suitable for beginners, since they are experts. Cinnamon gave me my first experience with Linux where the UI actually felt intuitive and logically organised, which was a significant factor in my decision to start using the OS.

rgand wrote:Cinnamon. I see the need for Mate or KDE if you have an old, slow computer that just won't process things fast enough for Cinnamon. I also gave XFCE a try but found it so counter-intuitive I won't bother with that again.

COMPLETE noob rubbish about KDE. Cinnamon is a triumph of style over substance and and Xfce is a 1993 DE that's been badly updated.

I disagree. Xfce is a simple, traditional desktop environment that's quite fit for both modern and old machines. And it's under active development, although there are only a few developers with limited available time.

I'm thankful towards the Xfce devs for spending their time and efforts in providing us with this fine little desktop environment.

So far I've only tried Cinnamon.
I've had a couple years using elementary which is pretty but I don't like pantheon and their latest distro is not for me.
From what people have said, I would imagine that XFCE is more old style. I used to like those early linux distro's so I'd probably like it.
Cinnamon's good for me.

Cinnamon on both my laptop and desktop - that said they both have powerful CPUs i7 and AMD 8 core Bulldozer respectively and both have 16G of RAM. I just like the fit and finish of Cinnamon even with all the bells and whistles turned off.

I run lubuntu/XFCE on a very very old PC (10 years old maybe - Pentium with 1G of RAM) and an old Mac Mini - they run just fine but definitely not as spiffy as Cinnamon.

I don't like the way Xfce bunches the icons in folder windows together. It just doesn't look right to me. I like more spacing. An insignificant thing to complain about? Maybe, but that's just what I like. If Xfce would let ME decide how those icons are spaced, I'd use it on my less powerful computers. But the look and feel isn't what I like so I use Cinnamon. Everything works on the computers I have and I have no complaints.

I don't like the way Xfce bunches the icons in folder windows together. It just doesn't look right to me. I like more spacing. An insignificant thing to complain about? Maybe, but that's just what I like. If Xfce would let ME decide how those icons are spaced, I'd use it on my less powerful computers. But the look and feel isn't what I like so I use Cinnamon. Everything works on the computers I have and I have no complaints.

I bet someone on this forum knows how to edit a certain file to give Xfce that spacing you want

Cinnamon is definitely preferred if a laptop/desktop that has decent processing power. Granted if I'm dealing with something that's aged/older hardware or limited cpu/ram I'll typically throw on xfce or mate. Having said this both are good options but Cinnamon is definitely a bit more flexible/easier to configure from what I'm seeing and what many others have also eluded to.

Hey OP, any particular reason for the "Xfce vs Cinnamon" question? These two distros don't strike me as the most obvious ones to be comparing to each other (not as obvious as "Xfce vs Mate", for example).

For what it's worth, I've been using Xfce for 3 years and I think its biggest advantage is the ease of customization. That's an important consideration for me, because (a) it was a big reason for me to get into Linux in the first place, and (b) the easier something is to customize, the easier it is to troubleshoot!

Cinnamon was never a big contender for me. I tried it out a few times, found it to be polished, but saw nothing that really "stood out" to me.

What does stand out for me right now is KDE.... This has one huge advantage: proper HiDPI support. Just by moving a little slider, you can scale the resolution by fractions rather than integers, so that, for example, a small screen with high resolution will look really nice. I've cobbled together a workable solution on Xfce, but it's not nearly as appealing as the KDE solution.

If Cinnamon adds fractional scaling one day, that would be a big enough deal for me to consider migrating to Cinnamon.